Tag: Noir

Noir

film_noir_0028

I love the noir, the dark city streets. A rat foraging. A possum eating fresh leaf tips from a rosewood seedling out back in the night garden where spiders haunt dark spaces, crawling over walls and spinning webs of truth, unseen.

A long alley, headlights at the end glaring setting your wispy hair on halo fire. Dark puddles reflecting pale light and bronze human statues smoking, waiting for buses and in cars, steaming breath. The smell of diesel. Homeless pile of rags in a corner moves, showing fact of life in a lonely place, uncaring and wanting. Desire is dying lonely and wicked.

Who will miss you? Your mother, ex, the lover who’s heart you broke when you left, leaving behind injustice and loneliness like dust and leaves in a swirl. Your lover’s head filled with fantasy and denial, sniffing back tears. Sleepless nights wandering about the dark streets, the smell of sewer on the edge of everywhere. Get on the bus, lift your bag and go on,  get out of here.

His name is Lover. Her’s is Shiela.

man and woman lying on bedHe stepped over a crack in the threshold she waited wanting him to stay but hating herself for her weakness. They made love, she needed it filled an empty space that needed filling, for him it wasn’t the love that he needed but to hold on to life, to stop it from slipping away, but of course it already had.

He felt owned not by this beauty who needed him but by his wife, his family, his kids, his boss, society, they all took pieces and it was difficult to find himself divided and plastered over so many walls. Sheila held him between her thighs mightily and he wanted to stay. He felt whole for a brief moment. He owned this stolen secret moment and he was himself for this time but not completely. His conscience wouldn’t let him own it. Sheila treated him like a man he hoped to be, Something not real because the real man was splintered and owned by many others. Its why he ran in the brief time he was alone without possessions, without an overseer. Sheila gave him that and not more.

She walked home in red heels wobbling on the cobbles. A silent tram in a far bend between the terraces. Her husband working late in his bar with his mates with another sheila. If he was home already, he didn’t ask. A forced acknowledgement. He just thought who his Shiela was. If he was jealous she would feel something but he barely noticed her. He had his wine in a dark room, the tele lighting up the walls. She went to bed, she washed the smell of her lover away.

Who will catch you when you fall?

 

grayscale photography of man praying on sidewalk with food in front

I’m too tired to look up at a dog sniffing, I hope it doesn’t piss on me as I haven’t the strength to push it away. Need to keep notes on all of this. How the fuck did I get here? Life didn’t start out this way, that’s certain. I remember being young, good looking and in love. Was that so long ago? I can smell my own ass, and sure as shit I need a shower. Hell! Was it only just last week I was there in the bank, trying to get some money, from a check I got, from somewhere. It’s was like I have this force field of stench keeping people away. They don’t want to see me, as if I might ask for something, money, a favour, a few moments of their valuable time, what are they afraid of? Do they feel guilty? They should, because everyone is guilty.

I ended up here somehow? It was the relationship, the corporate job, the modern home with the spa and all the fittings. Now all I see are legs and asses. I’m as low as a roach down here.

The ground is hard and cold in the spring and my hands grimy black. My sign says that I am homeless and I need money for food. Most people don’t read it. Sometimes they put paper money in my cup. and that goes a long way. I can buy some wine for later when it’s cold. There is a clothes bin down near the public school I can sleep in, if Norm doesn’t take it first or the men haven’t emptied it. My teeth are loose and my back feels like it can’t take much more of this.

The street is illuminated like a noir painting,  A cross, a crack to fill, shiny things flashing past a nouveau post office. A man walking towards me jigging coins wanting me to notice how generous he is. ‘Thanks,’ I interrupt and a car parks perilously close to my legs on the pavement. A door clicks and she steps out. All legs with an ass I could go to town on. She has golden hair tied back. A pearl necklace which matches nicely with her white diamond wristwatch. The shoes she’s wearing would keep me warm for a month. I could buy a house with that car. She looks towards me but doesn’t see. I am something unpleasant. The man comes around and they walk, he looks back and tosses a coin as if to tip me for not staring. I saw though. I saw how she looked like a girl I once knew in a previous life. A time that is like a dream, before the estrangement and all the drugs, and the breakdown of everything. I was that guy and she was my girl. Maybe it’s not real. Maybe I was never that way. Not rich not handsome, not dirt under your shoes.

I see crazy Anne. ‘Poo Anne’ the locals call her, well it’s not nice but it is descriptive. She begs. We have our corners. Our territories. They say she was an singer. She did shows, all over the country. She sold records and was on TV. They say she was inducted into the music hall of fame. She was somebody. Now she begs and sleeps in the boarding home on Cavendish Street. She was with this guy who had connections. They used together. He use to beat her occasionally. Maybe he is in prison for putting his wife in a suitcase. Perhaps he is dead. Anne should be so lucky.

All the famous beggars, the handsome homeless, the millionaires rummaging through bins for throwaway sandwiches. We were loved once. Think about that when you see us. Our place is only a few doors away from your Bellview Hill home and your Mercedes. Your mental breakdown, your divorce.

I think I saw my brother last week, he saw me and crossed the street. I remind him of the old days that he can’t deal with. I think I saw my daughter. She was stoned and stared at me with bleary grey eyes, unable to focus. She asked me for a cigarette, but I don’t smoke and I said ‘no’. ‘Shelley’, I said but she said she thought I must be mistaken. She said her name was User or Hooker or something, I can’t remember but it wasn’t Shelley. Shelley doesn’t know I’m alive. She spoke with her dead eyes after a pause of staring at my hands then flinched when I lifted a coin from my cup not trusting it. She was waiting for some kind of recognition but wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was in a dark nameless place of shadows. A rung lower. Borrowing and stealing air from the living.